I want to be vulnerable for a moment.
I grew up an indoor kid. There are various reasons why that happened, but the end result was that I spent more time indoors than out, playing video games or curled up with a good book. I loved words, the power they had to make you feel different, think different, create worlds in your head. I always wanted to do that, but I wasn’t sure where to start.
For a long time, I wanted to be a journalist (not exactly the twist you saw coming, but stick with me), but that was vetoed pretty early on, as were other ideas of the kind of person I wanted to be. I had no support system or any kind of encouragement to try to go after what I wanted, so I went along with what my wardens parents wanted of me, but found a way to have an outlet in some ways.
I always wanted to write. I had teachers in elementary and junior high who saw it as their focus to try to cultivate that passion in their students. I remember in 4th grade, my teacher had us create several books throughout the year. Two that I can recall off the top of my head was a biography I did about my maternal grandmother, and the other was a fable I made up about a fish.
But then high school came, and I wasn’t encouraged in any way to do anything, pretty much. Maybe they figured I should have figured out by then what I wanted to do for the rest of my life (haha), or maybe it was just a shitty school. Both things can be true. Long story short, I didn’t pick up much in those 4 years that I would take with me for the rest of my life, other than the knowledge that the people who are supposed to help you will let you down worse than anyone else.
I floundered, going through the motions of what I felt like I was supposed to be doing, what I’d been pressured into doing. I didn’t read unless it was for my coursework, I largely stopped playing games(due in no small part that I couldn’t afford them). I didn’t do much of anything I used to enjoy. I existed, and that felt like too much at the time.
Then, I found fan fiction.
And for years, I just read and read, never thinking I could contribute to the collective. I didn’t like any fandoms enough to want to spend that much time trying and failing to write. What if no one liked it? What if I was bad at it? Just read other people’s efforts; let them be vulnerable. It was fine to spectate.
Until that changed, too.
I’ll spare you the long story, but it involved being diagnosed with a chronic illness, not knowing what it meant or what came next, and figuring out what I wanted out of life. So I started writing. For years, it was fan fiction. It changed from new perspectives on well-trodden paths, to new paths, to OCs in new worlds, and at that point, I said why not write my own worlds?
All of this to say that I am not formally trained in this. I am learning every paragraph, and with that growth comes the realization that I want more from myself. I’m on my 4th or 5th draft of the last Blood Sealed book, and each time I go over it, something gets added. Not words, or ideas, but the weight of this being the best that I can do at this moment, that it’s better than the last draft, but the next draft might be even better, needing to push, to draw more out of myself. I know at some point I’ll have to stop, to send it out into the world, and it’ll be out of my hands, but I’m not ready yet.
Close, but not yet.
Have you ever dealt with something like this?
